


Frozen

by Haospart



Series: No Real Choices [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Imprisonment, Stasis, Zal isn't the outlander in this little Blip so I put him somewhere that sucks More, i guess, it's more of a setup for the next thing than anything else tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26763103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haospart/pseuds/Haospart
Summary: He was taken, ages and ages ago, captured by the Republic and thrown into the deepest, darkest hole they could find.  No one was sure they could really kill him, if it wassafeto kill him.  So they didn't.  They left him and forgot, even as Zakuul rose to power.But he's an ally of the dead, and they aren't happy.
Series: No Real Choices [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2186013
Kudos: 10
Collections: Continuity:  Love and Everything





	Frozen

**Author's Note:**

> Featured Character:  
> Sith Inquisitor - Zal-hessah Vooretta

It was dark. Extraordinarily so, with only the sporadic flickering of long-broken lights. In the five years since Zakuul attacked, the facility had crumbled unnaturally fast. Not that anyone had been around to notice, of course. It didn't need to be manned or staffed with anything more than droids, and the security droids did not care for the integrity of unnecessary halls or expendable rooms.

The droids didn't need overhead lighting to accomplish their patrols, to monitor and note down the state of containment.

A small team of astromech droids also called the desolate hallways home. Their sole purpose was the constant upkeep and repair of the central chamber. It was the deepest, the furthest underground. No plants grew so far down, and none ever would.

Yet, it was in that chamber, hidden in the depths of the planet, that light still lived. The chamber was large,  _ enormous _ frankly, and lay at the center of four criss-crossed hallways. Its ceiling was high enough to easily accommodate a walker, and nearly disappeared into the dark. At the exact middle of the chamber, built like a pillar into the floor and ceiling with platforms and spinning, whirring machinery, a stasis chamber was maintained in perfect condition.

No organic life had touched the facility in years, nothing had ventured in, and nothing ever left. The only thing organic within, for years, was the single prisoner they'd left behind.

He floated in stasis, eyes open but unseeing, glowing a solid green and leaking a spindly mist that dissipated as it left him. A thick, heavy durasteel collar rested around his neck, loosely attaching him by the throat to two pillars of durasteel to his sides, which generated a cylindrical, near-transparent shield to surround the stasis field he was suspended in.

His hands were cuffed together in front of him, hanging limp and frozen. Each cuff was thicker around than his arm, locked to the other with bars of metal. They were chained to the floor twice each, bolted down with only enough slack to allow the man they restrained the space he needed to remain effectively in the exact center of the stasis field. Two more cuffs locked around his arms, above his elbows, and those chains bolted to the floor behind him.

Six long, spider-like metal arms remained poised outside the first few layers of containment, each one sparked and broiled in a cold blue electricity, jumping to those next to it and wrapping the entire mechanism, the stasis field, containment shield and all, in a loop of electrical discharge which promised hell for any who approached it, from either side.

This was a prison designed to last lifetimes. It could easily last a century or more, and for far longer if the droids remained to take care of the finer mechanical details.

It held failsafe after failsafe.

Even as the facility crumbled around it, tubing and piping hanging through a cracking ceiling, this room could remain solid and operational for years to come.

Soon, though, it wouldn't need to. Rumors of a haunted prison would grow, the angry, restless spirits each bound in blood to the man frozen in time.

They were not bound by the laws he was. They dragged him through dreams, hissed at him in his mind for his failures, but they hissed elsewhere. Frustrated growls, the sound of snapping teeth as they gathered strength to wander further, scream louder, demanding blood and  _ freedom _ .

He had taken them from their prisons and found one of his own, just as dark and desolate as the abandoned tombs of the dead he'd found these spirits in. In the Forcewalker they'd found escape, adventure,  _ vibrancy _ . A taste such as had been provided would never be enough.

The stories of haunting, of shrieking voices calling for freedom in the depths of an old, abandoned prison, would spread. They would reach the right ears, and there would be  _ freedom _ at last.

Even as they clawed at his mind, struck his heart for all the people he'd cared to save and failed, the bound spirits worked to save him.


End file.
